The 1904 anthropology days and Olympic games : sport, race, and American imperialism
"One of the more problematic sport spectacles in American history took place at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, which included the third modern Olympic Games. Associated with the Games was a curious event known as Anthropology Days organized by William J. McGee and James Sullivan, at that time the leading figures in American anthropology and sports, respectively. McGee recruited Natives who were participating in the fair's ethnic displays to compete in sports events, with the "scientific" goal of measuring the physical prowess of "savages" as compared with "civilized men." This interdisciplinary collection of essays assesses the ideas about race, imperialism, and Western civilization manifested in the 1904 World's Fair and Olympic Games and shows how they are still relevant." "A turning point in both the history of the Olympics and the development of modern anthropology, these games expressed the conflict between the Old World emphasis on culture and New World emphasis on utilitarianism. Marked by Franz Boas's paper at the Scientific Congress, the events in St. Louis witnessed the beginning of the shift in anthropological research from nineteenth-century evolutionary racial models to the cultural relativist paradigm that is now a cornerstone of modern American anthropology. Racist pseudoscience nonetheless reappears to this day in the realm of sports."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, ©2008
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, ©2008
Exhibition catalogs
xviii, 471 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.
9780803210981, 0803210981
221147865
Introduction : bodies before Boas, sport before the laughter left / Susan Brownell
A "special Olympics" : testing racial strength and endurance at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition / Nancy J. Parezo
The "physical value" of races and nations : anthropology and athletics at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition / Mark Dyreson
Pierre de Coubertin's concepts of race, nation, and civilization / Otto J. Schantz
Anthropology days, the construction of whiteness, and American imperialism in the Philippines / Gerald R. Gems
"From savagery to civic organization" : the nonparticipation of Canadian Indians in the anthropology days of the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games / Christine M. O'Bonsawin
"Leav(ing) the white(s)
far behind them" : the girls from Fort Shaw (Montana) Indian School, basketball champions of the 1904 World's Fair / Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith
Germans and others at the "American games" : problems of national and international representation at the 1904 Olympics / Suzuko Mousel Knott
Greece and the 1904 "American" Olympics / Alexander Kitroeff
From the anthropology days to the anthropological Olympics / John Bale
Olympic anthropology days and the progress of exclusion : toward an anthropology of democracy / Henning Eichberg
The growth of scientific standards from anthropology days to present days / Jonathan Marks
Afterword : back to the future / Susan Brownell